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January 19

The food tastes good

In "the food tastes good", what kind of word is "taste"? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Present tense of the verb to taste. If you say The taste of the food is good then taste is a noun. Dbfirs 08:12, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What is doing the tasting? Forgive me. I've been out of an English-speaking country for so long, I just forget these things.

And with smell, if you smell the cheese, you are doing the smelling. If the cheese smells, isn't the cheese giving off a smell? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:21, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The verbs can be used both transitively (where you do the tasting or smelling), and intransitively where it is the food or the cheese that "excites a particular sensation". See wikt:taste. Dbfirs 08:34, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhhhhhhhh, I see. I get it now. Thank you so much, Dbfirs. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:38, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is an unaccusative verb. That article notes (in section "Unaccusativity in English") that "many unaccusatives alternate with a corresponding transitive construction where the unaccusative subject appears in direct object position". (Note that "good" is not a direct object, but a complement.) --ColinFine (talk) 18:14, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Colin, for that neologism. The concept is familiar, but the word is new to me! I can't find it in any printed dictionary yet, but I see that it has been in Wiktionary for ten years. Dbfirs 18:31, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From the article I linked to, Dbfirs: 'The term "unaccusative verb" was first used in a 1978 paper by David M. Perlmutter of the University of California, San Diego. According to Perlmutter himself, the terms "unaccusative" and "unergative" were both invented by the linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum'.--ColinFine (talk) 21:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, yes, I'd read the article to understand what concept was being referred to. (I wasn't unaccusing you of anything. ) The Wiktionary entry that I linked to has two more recent usages, so the neologism will reach printed dictionaries soon. I expect the OED already has it in its database, but they haven't added it to their Third Edition yet. Dbfirs 21:52, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just gonna leave this here for you. Matt Deres (talk) 20:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would just describe "taste" as a linking verb. Khemehekis (talk) 22:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why Copenhagen and not Copenhaven?

Copenhaven makes more sense given the meaning of the name of the city, and there exist places in Britain with names that end in "haven". So, why did "haven" change into "hagen"? Count Iblis (talk) 22:27, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary says, From Low German Kopenhagen, a calque (perhaps modified by folk etymology) of Danish København. déhanchements (talk) 01:24, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Surprisingly, something similar, yet not identical, exists in Russian: In the genitive case, singular number, male and neuter gender, of adjectives and pronouns, the suffix "ого-его" is pronounced as "ово-ево", even though the standard pronunciation of the Russian Г is like the English "g" (in "dog"), while the standard pronunciation of the Russian в is like the English "v". HOTmag (talk) 14:18, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if is strictly related here, but there is a linguistic relationship between the sounds V-W-G, see for example the names "Wilhelm" (with a "v" sound), "William" (with a "W" sound) and "Guillaume" (with a G sound). The same relationship exists in names like Viscaya/Gascony in Southwestern France, etc. There seems to be common linguistic sound changes that cause sounds to drift among European languages among these consonants; that could atleast explain some of the variation here. It should be noted that French also uses the "G" (Copenhague) and that could have a strong influence on the English spelling. --Jayron 32 19:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]